Week 14: Bring a movie to class!

For class I brought "Hairspray" the musical. This movie is an AMAZING musical with great singing, acting, dancing and a great message. It takes place in Baltimore 1962 with the focus on an "American Bandstand"-type of show, "The Corny Collins Show", where every day nice, white kids dance to the hit songs and once a month they have "Negro Day." This was a time where TV was segregated and would never be integrated.

The songs start with giving the major issue a light and fluffy feeling, but by the middle, as the blacks march to integrate the TV show show the struggle for equal rights. The beginning introduces the difference between whites and black in 1960s with different songs about their lives. They also talk about how whites took the black artist's song and remade them to make them more popular than the original song. In one scene in the movie, it shows the white girls singing the song then transitioned into "Negro Day" with their girls singing the same song. The producer complains to the host of "Negro Day" that they stole the song they sang on the regular show and she responds with "But they're the ones who wrote it."

In the end, the struggle ends and the show is integrated. With the different ending shots, the movie concludes with the world changing as people who are different are being represented in television whether it's an overweight girl who just wants to be famous or blacks on TV along with the "normal" skinny, gorgeous white teenagers. I HIGHLY recommend everyone go see the movie. Plus, you can see John Travolta in drag.